Branding Barriers

You might think that once you have your whole marketing 101 down packed, your audience, brand’s objectives you are ready to make sure your branding sticks! Well, you’re almost right. You’re about half-way there. There are a lot of issues that come up when a company is trying to truly define it’s brand and make sure that their brand truly sticks.

Issues? What issues? Yes, I know…you’re thinking “Alex you must have lost your mind, I have my entire thing down packed”. Okay lets explore…

Logo Design: The true mark of the company! This is the thing you want people to really remember when they see your business. With DeClustered Marketing, we just wanted something simple. More on this on future blogs. One major thing here is, don’t copy someone! Please! You have to be unique in your own way, otherwise people will just claim you for a cheap knock-off.

Collateral Design: Business cards, letter-heads, etc. Shouldn’t this be in marketing expenses? Always remember that you want to make sure that there is a clear uniformity throughout your branding. This could be a huge barrier if you spent all your money on just a logo design. Many designers will have a “Branding Kit”. You pay a bit for it, but it will have everything you need.

Websites: I’ve seen a whole lot of horrendous website designs and it’s sad to say that I still see really horrendous designs. I cannot stress this fact enough, please find a good website designer. If you can’t, then contact me I have a slew of them at my fingertips. Why would this be a brand barrier? Your website is the face of your company. What was once “who has the best building in town” is now, who has the best website in town. If your brand doesn’t reflect on your website, then you simply failed at your first line to show your potential customers and/or clients what your brand & company represents.

eMail address: Holy eMails Batman! Yes, please don’t just cop for a gmail address. Go to your local IT guy and ask him to setup your eMails. No, this isn’t the website guy’s job!

Internal Marketing: Yes! The thing we went over in Organizational Level Marketing. You want to make sure that everything from your phone answering to your staff’s internal culture reflects your brand’s beliefs and why you do things.

Budgets: Do you have a budget fully mapped out? Yes, we didn’t bring it up, but you have to have a serious budget mapped out for any branding you do. Just figure an amount that you have the ability to spend. If you’re a startup business, then you don’t need a big budget, but you do need a small budget to go off of. I’ve seen a lot of successful companies run with a budget of only $500.

Overall you have to consider these 6 factors that could block you from successfully launching your brand. If you don’t’ spend the time to launch right, well then you’ll just spend a whole lot of money trying to shove something in people’s faces and it won’t work. So, take some time to really make sure your not being blocked from approaching someone and saying “hey! this is my brand! Check out my site”.